A Road Through the Pass Roadmaking Haast to Makarora By David Grantham.

Publisher: David Grantham, NZ 2011.

Good softback, some light edge/shelf -wear, some corner creases. 182 pages, illustrated.

The story of men and machines - blasting, bridging and roadmaking over the Haast Pass in the 1950s by private contractors and Ministry of Works. Isolation - a word that applied to the settlers of South Westland more and for longer than most in New Zealand. Of hundreds who were dropped off by boat at Jackson Bay in 1875 as part of an illconceived government settlement scheme, most left quickly. The few who stayed passed on to their descendants the dream of a road that would one day link them with the outside world. New Zealand's first commercial airline in 1934 had a dramatic effect in easing that isolation, but still the settlers longed for a road. A wharf, promised for 60 years, was finally built at Jackson Bay in 1938 and a road was pushed from there to Haast by 1946. Meanwhile, a road from Otago over Haast Pass was also being formed until World War Il intervened, and it was not till the 1950s that work resumed - initially from the Haast end. This is the story of men and machines - blasting, bridging and roadmaking their way to make A Road through the Pass a reality and the word Isolation a distant memory.

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